


ur a qt

by elisela



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Fluff, M/M, Stiles Stilinski is a Nice Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28958619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela
Summary: Scott rolls his eyes, and Stiles army crawls from the bed to the open doorway, peeking out down the hall before scrambling up and darting across, slapping the post-it onto Derek’s bulletin board and diving back into his room. “I’m doing a thing,” he says once he’s back on the bed, Convex Optimization textbook out so it at leastlookslike he’s doing his homework. “For Derek. You know, compliments and shit so he frowns a little less often.”
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 19
Kudos: 360
Collections: A Very Sterek Winter 2021





	ur a qt

**Author's Note:**

> For A Very Sterek Winter 2021, Day 1: Compliments. As always, a big thank you to The Cursed Five for helping me with this and all the encouragement ♥️

It starts on Valentine’s Day.

Stiles loves the holiday— _yes_ , even though he’s single, thanks for the reminder, Scott!—and not just because he can haul his ass down to Bartell’s for half-off candy the day after. He loves the anticipation, the way people seem softer, the excuse to buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles valentines and tape them to all doors of his assigned section of Willow Hall.

(He has to buy four boxes so that nobody but Derek gets the ‘I like you more than pizza’ design, and it’s totally worth it.)

By the time he gets back from his shift at Pagliacci, carrying a pizza that he totally didn’t make wrong on purpose so that he could bring it home for dinner, the doors are covered with cards and notes, tiny trinkets and candy bars. Love is in the air, and Stiles couldn’t be happier—until he reaches the end of the hall and comes face to face with Derek’s door, bare except for the card that he had taped up on it earlier. 

The problem is, he thinks, that once the freshman stop being cowed by Derek’s looks they start hitting on him relentlessly, and by December they’ve decided that his default state is grumpy and treat him accordingly by completely ignoring him unless he’s the RA on duty and they need something. Stiles himself had lived on the same floor with Derek for two years and assumed the same, until they’d been the RA’s assigned to cover winter break the year prior. Stiles’ dad had surprised him by coming up to Seattle for Christmas; they’d invited Derek out to dinner with them and Stiles and Derek had spent every minute of the next two weeks together. 

Incidentally, that’s when Stiles had fallen head over heels for Derek.

He glances at his own door, across the hall from Derek’s, and down at the pizza in his hands. His big plan for the night had been to spend some quality time gaming and gorging himself on food he didn’t have to pay for before actually getting a good night’s sleep so that he could spend the next day studying for mid-terms, but maybe a change is in order. He props his door open, sets the pizza box on his desk, and picks up a book as he flops onto his bed and pretends he’s not watching the doorway to see when Derek comes home.

Hardly fifteen minutes have passed when he hears the beeping from the keycard reader across the hall, and he looks up to see Derek nudging his door open with his hip. “Hey, big guy,” he calls out, “I grabbed us some pizza. Wanna watch a movie?”

Derek looks over, and Stiles is gratified to see that the slight downturn of his mouth disappears when their eyes meet. “Give me a minute to shower? I just got back from practice.”

“Yeah, I’ll pick something,” Stiles says, and glares at the door swinging closed when Derek hollers that he doesn’t want to watch Batman Begins for the tenth time. Heathen. He can’t believe he’s sharing his pizza with him. Derek drops onto his bed ten minutes later and hands him a Coke and a box of candy hearts that are already open, and when Stiles leans forward to hit the play button on his laptop, he settles down a little closer than before. 

“Thanks for the card,” Derek says a moment later, picking up a slice of pizza with a funny smile. “Guess you weren’t lying.”

Stiles pauses from where he’s shoving half his slice in his mouth. “I’d never lie about pizza,” he says.

_Your picture could be next to ‘brooding’ in the dictionary, but it’d be my favorite page_.

“Stiles,” Scott says, holding out the bright pink post-it, “what’s this?”

He falls off the bed grabbing for it, slamming his palm into the corner of the desk and letting out a shout, yanking the note out of Scott’s hand before collapsing against him. “Not for you,” he wheezes as Scott dumps him out of his lap and onto the floor. “Privacy, Scotty, have you heard of it? It’s when you don’t get your big hairy paws all over your friend’s desk, reading all the things that aren’t yours.”

Scott rolls his eyes, and Stiles army crawls from the bed to the open doorway, peeking out down the hall before scrambling up and darting across, slapping the post-it onto Derek’s bulletin board and diving back into his room. “I’m doing a thing,” he says once he’s back on the bed, Convex Optimization textbook out so it at least _looks_ like he’s doing his homework. “For Derek. You know, compliments and shit so he frowns a little less often.”

“You think that was a compliment?” Scott asks, raising his eyebrows. “I’m starting to remember why you’re single.”

Derek looks confused later that night when he pulls the note off, glancing down the hallway, so maybe Scott has a point. 

_Your voice isn’t as deep as I thought it would be but it suits you._

Derek’s playing his guitar. As if the universe wasn’t already screaming that Derek was out of his league, Derek is _playing his guitar_ while he sits on Stiles’ bed, and the goddamn sun shines out of his face when he turns and smiles. 

Stiles would say something, but he’s watching the way Derek’s fingers stretch across the frets and it shuts his brain down better than the Adderall ever did. 

“I didn’t mean to snoop, my pen rolled under the bed,” Derek says, fingers still moving. “I didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t,” Stiles finally manages to say. “I mean, I can play a few easy chords but—it was my mom’s. I just keep it around.” Derek stops immediately, a guilty look shifting over his face, and Stiles shakes his head. “No, don’t—keep going. Please.”

Derek hesitates, then nods, resettling his fingers on the strings. “What did she like to play?”

“I don’t remember a lot of it,” he admits, finally moving from the door and sinking down into his desk chair, pointing his toe on the ground to sway back and forth. He slides the cups of coffee he’d run down to the dining hall for onto his desk, pushing his laptop out of the way. “I could never sit still long enough and it was all folk music, I didn’t care about it as a kid. I wish I would have.”

Derek nods and looks down to play a few chords, repeating them a few times before moving into the song. He looks up at Stiles after a few moments during eyebrows raised. “Do you recognize this one?” When Stiles nods he hums a few bars and says, “I’m not much of a singer,” before he starts to sing. 

_I'm pretty sure you rub yourself with that one Yankee Candle that smells like the perfect boyfriend instead of wearing cologne like a normal person._

Stiles doesn’t really understand hockey. It’s not his thing; he can’t keep track of the puck through the skates and bodies, doesn’t have a clue what all the penalties are, and isn’t thrilled with the idea of having to wear his coat indoors because the arena has to be at a temperature that could sufficiently store Dippin’ Dots. 

But Derek plays hockey, so here Stiles is—185 miles from home, freezing his ass off next to Jackson because he was the only one with a car who was willing to make the impromptu road trip to Oregon for the last game of the season. 

The Huskies lose. Stiles isn’t surprised; the Pack loses a lot, they’re a ragtag group of students who play for the love of it and not much else. But it’s Derek’s last game, and he wishes it would have had a better outcome. 

Jackson drags him over to the entrance to the locker room as soon as the game ends—how he knows people everywhere they go Stiles will never understand—and the whole trip is worth it when he sees Derek’s face light up.

“You could have ridden down with the team,” he says, engulfing Stiles in a hug. It’s awkward—Derek’s taller than him in skates and sweaty, and he hugs Derek so rarely that it flusters him, makes him pull away faster than he wants, sure Derek can feel how his heart is racing through all the layers. He wants nothing more than to bury his face against Derek’s neck and breathe him in, to memorize the faint scent of fir and woodsmoke. “You want to ride back with us? We have room.”

“Can't ditch this guy,” Stiles says, jerking his thumb towards Jackson and wishing he’d just taken the train down. 

“I’m fine with it,” Jackson says—later, two hours into the bus ride when Stiles’ head is dropping onto Derek’s shoulder because the swaying motion of the bus is putting him to sleep, he remembers that Danny goes to Oregon, and he wonders if Jackson planned this all along. 

“Thanks for coming,” Derek whispers; the tilt of his head makes his lips drag across Stiles’ head, and it’s the last thing he remembers until they pull up to the dorm. 

_You’re not exactly the poster boy for the hipster look but you could have fooled me with the beanie and black iced coffee. Do you look good in everything??_

He’s not stalking Derek—he’s _not_ , no matter what Scott says. They live across the hall from each other, they have classes at roughly the same times, and they frequent the same places that every student at the university does, so of course he sees Derek a lot. It’s not like he was at the U Village to get a celebratory new pair of sneakers and saw Derek go into Starbucks and followed him, he just … wanted coffee. 

And he happened to go to the Starbucks that Derek had gone into an hour ago. 

There’s a massive line—there always is, wrapping out the door and along the walkway, and Stiles is just getting in the door when he sees Derek at the counter, backpack on his shoulder, reaching for a cup of coffee. “Hey,” he says when Derek gets close enough, glancing at the pair of drinks in his hand. “Couldn’t decide?”

“Something like that,” Derek says, looking over his shoulder for a moment and then back at him. “If I’d known you were coming I would have saved the table for you, sorry.”

“Nah,” Stiles says, shuffling forward in line and holding up his bag. “Just came to shop, not study. Are you walking back?”

“Yeah, do you want to go back together? I just have to do something really quick, meet you outside when you’re done?”

“Sure thing,” Stiles says, grinning when Derek grants him one of his soft smiles before walking away. If Stiles cranes his neck to see where he goes, well—that’s not really any of Scott’s business. 

_You’re too pretty to work this hard._

It’s mid-May when Derek steps through his open door; Stiles is bent over his desk writing formulas on an index card in the smallest handwriting he can manage, cans of Red Bull littered around him. It’s an act of cruelty that he has an exam three weeks before finals, and he’s cursing himself for putting off studying for so long. 

Derek looks like he’s going to throw up. 

“Dude,” Stiles says, blinking at him. His eyes feel like dust has been ground into them. “What’s wrong?”

“I got in,” he says, shoving his open laptop at Stiles. “They just sent my acceptance.”

Stiles frowns. The letters on the screen are swimming in and out of focus and he pulls back a little, squinting until he sees the official University of Washington School of Law header on the email. “Dude!” he says again, “five for five, that’s awesome! Do you know which you’ll choose yet?”

Derek looks at him intensely for a moment. “Why are you leaving me those notes?”

Stiles jerks back and tumbles off his desk chair, knocking a pile of discarded index cards and highlighters off as he goes. “Uh,” he says, because he’d been _careful_ , damn it, and thought he covered his tracks. “It’s—what notes?” 

Derek rolls his eyes and leaves the room, coming back with a stack of hot pink post-it’s held out in front of him. 

He _kept_ them. All Stiles’ shitty compliments and—non-compliments, apparently, sitting right there in the palm of his hand. 

“These notes,” he says, and, “don’t try and—I know your handwriting,” he adds. His voice is rough, like the mere thought of confronting Stiles about this is stressful.

Stiles picks himself up and rights his desk chair, sinking back into it as his stomach sours. “I just wanted—I don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “I thought it would make you laugh.”

There’s a pause and Derek says, “oh,” like he’s _disappointed_ , and Stiles risks a look over at him. “So it was just a—a joke to you.”

“ _No_ ,” he says, because the crack in Derek’s voice causes one in his heart, and then, “well, yeah, some of them—it turns out I’m not the greatest with compliments but they were supposed to make you smile—” he breaks off and sighs, irritated with himself, and opens his desk drawer, searching for all the notes he’d written that were way too honest to leave out where anyone could see them, notes that were less complimentary and more embarrassingly sappy heartfelt rambling, and shoves them at Derek’s chest. 

_I wish everyone on this floor saw how much you did for them. I don’t see any other RA’s hosting Spaghetti Sunday dinners._

_Sometimes I do stupid shit just because it makes you smile._

_I saw a house for rent on my run today and I stayed daydreaming about living there with you—walking to get coffee in the morning, watching the rain from the windows, listening to you play my Mom’s guitar on the porch_.

_Your hoodie’s in my bottom drawer. Sorry I lied when you asked if you left it here._

_I don’t know what I’m going to do when I don’t get to see you every day_.

“It wasn’t a joke,” Stiles says when Derek is finished flipping through them and is just standing there, staring down. “I know the ones I left you were flippant but I’m pretty clearly not great at doing things by halves—”

“Do you want to go to dinner with me?” Derek interrupts, making an aborted motion with his free hand, reaching out before he clenches his hand into a fist and drops it.

“As a celebration for your acceptance?” he asks, carefully, trying not to get his hopes up.

“As a date,” Derek clarifies, and Stiles feels all the breath leave his body. 

“Yeah,” he says, pushing back from his desk and tripping face first into Derek as he tries to get up. “Yeah, just let me—uh, I just need to change—” Derek’s laughing, and Stiles looks over at him, frowning. “What?”

“It’s half past midnight, Stiles,” Derek says, shaking his head with a smile. “And you’re in the middle of finishing your notes for your exam in eight hours—I didn’t mean right now. But tomorrow night?”

Oh _shit_ , his exam. “Yeah,” he says, nodding as he falls back into his chair, groping for his pen—the one Derek bends down to scoop up from the floor. “Okay, yeah, tomorrow. Sushi?”

“Sushi’s great,” Derek says, and then they just sit there for a moment, grinning at each other like idiots.

“Okay,” he says again. “It’s a date.”

There’s a note on his desk when he gets back from his exam, and he grins, thrilled at the idea of Derek abusing his keycard privileges to sneak into his room. He drops his backpack on his bed before he sits in his chair, reaching for the paper and candy heart sitting on top of it. 

_Sushi at 6pm? Took this out of the box on Valentine’s to give you and chickened out_ — _sorry._

— _D_

_PS: you should wear my hoodie._

Stiles snorts, shaking his head—he’d wondered if Derek liked the idea of Stiles in his clothes when he hadn’t immediately asked for the hoodie back, and he’s stupidly excited that he has the confirmation in his hands. He picks up the candy heart—yellow, with pink capital letters spelling out UR A QT—and the letter, rummages around in his drawers for a small ziplock bag, and drops them both in there before stretching himself out on the floor to tuck them both into the outside pocket on his mom’s guitar bag. 

He texts Derek a confirmation, pulls on the hoodie and checks the time before dropping down on his bed, pulling his laptop towards him and bringing up a real estate website. The house he saw for rent is still available and he starts reading up on it in earnest, already wondering if he can form a compelling enough argument to get Derek to agree to move in together.

**Author's Note:**

> You can reblog the [tumblr post](https://elisela.tumblr.com/post/641207777941995520/ur-a-qt-elisela-teen-wolf-tv-archive-of-our) if you want :)


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